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Feeling Pleasures argues that the sense of touch assumed a new and unique importance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that the work of major poets of the period, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and John Milton, should be read alongside these developing ideas.
List of contents
- Introduction: Touching the Past
- 1: 'A Sensible Touching, Feeling and Groping': Metaphor and Sensory Experience in the English Reformation
- 2: 'The Lightest and the Largest Term': Lancelot Andrewes and the Variousness of Touch
- 3: 'Attactu Nullo': Touching the Gods, from Lucretius to Shakespeare
- 4: 'Feeling Pleasures': Allegory and Intimacy in the Faerie Queene
- 5: Touching the Beautiful: The Feeling of Artworks in the European Renaissance
- 6: 'A Sorrow, Soft and Agreeable': Philosophies of Tickling
- 7: 'Every where Environ'd, and Incessantly Touch'd': Natural Philosophies of Feeling in Seventeenth Century England
- 8: 'Transported touch': The Experience of Feeling in Paradise Lost
- 9: 'Like Rain falling on Sand or Hair dip'd in Water': Metaphor and the Chinese Art of Feeling
- Conclusion: The Touch of the Future
About the author
Joe Moshenska was educated at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, and at Princeton University, where he was initially the Eliza Jane Procter Visiting Fellow before receiving his PhD. He is now a Fellow and Lecturer in English at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he mostly teaches the literature and culture of Renaissance England.
Summary
Feeling Pleasures argues that the sense of touch assumed a new and unique importance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that the work of major poets of the period, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and John Milton, should be read alongside these developing ideas.
Additional text
[A]n impressive scholarly achievement. This thoughtfully observed and beautifully written book is a pleasure to read, and a moving reminder that the instinct toward intimate contact lies at the heart of all of our inquiries into the lost worlds of the past.
